but to learn something.
the city that comes home to us,
in newspapers’ (the optic) grim times, portend –
there in the libidinal Cartesian streets
that city’s oxymoronic “life” –
smashed in windows of dressed up views.
art as obituary.
relations as anomalous compass.
fangs facts strata statistic
the coronary of expectation bursting
what we loved
what we feared
what we desired
what we speculated
art is the expert and the confounded fool
some five and dime
some give and take
the poem, as always, the esoteric test case:
Blake, London
in every weakened woeful face
the blackening church
their marriage hearse
this city is the document of the ruler and the ruled
each city a mirror to misery seen most perfectly
those acts of sight, aggressive and strangling,
police your instinct
I run like loose blood, sighing this midnight city day.
eleanor j jackson 